Digital Shiv

Oct 24 2009

Windows 7 How-To: installing from USB drive, migrating from WinXP, upgrading without having Xp/Vista, and more

Paul Thurrott’s Windows SuperSite Blog provides instructions for installing Windows 7 onto a clean hard drive, without a Windows OS already on it to upgrade from, using the “upgrade” installer, for instance the $30 downloadable Win7 available to those with an active US college email address.

Here’s instructions from Lifehacker’s Guide to Upgrading to Windows 7:

Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista

We showed you how to do this back when the Windows 7 Beta was released, but if you were waiting for a slightly more stable Win7 release, you might be ready to dual boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista. This is generally the method of testing Windows 7 that we’d recommend, since it allows you to try out everything Windows 7 RC has to offer without entirely giving up your trusty old operating system.
Upgrade from Windows 7 Beta to RC

If you’ve already taken the plunge with the Windows 7 Beta, chances are you don’t really want to set everything up all over again when you install Windows 7 RC. Unfortunately for you, Microsoft recommends a fresh install over an upgrade, and in fact, if you want to upgrade rather than install from scratch, you’ll need to perform a simple hack, as described in this post from Life Rocks 2.0 covering how to upgrade from Windows 7 Beta to the Windows 7 RC. Likewise, you’ll have to perform an in-kind upgrade, meaning you can’t go from 32-bit Vista to a 64-bit Windows 7 install without doing a clean install.
Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7

There’s really nothing to this; Windows 7 provides a direct upgrade path to Windows 7 from Vista, which means that when you install Windows 7, all you need to do is select the Upgrade option when you run the Windows 7 installation. Note: Windows 7 requires that you’ve installed Vista Service Pack 1 in order to upgrade.
Migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7

Unfortunately Windows 7 doesn’t have a direct upgrade path from XP, meaning if you’re going to take the full plunge from XP to Windows 7, you’ve got to do some work on your own if you’re hoping to migrate your files and settings from XP to Win7. Luckily Microsoft has a video detailing how to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 using the User State Migration Tool, an app from Microsoft that moves all your desktop settings, application settings, and files to a new Windows installation. (Also found via Life Rocks 2.0)

LifeHacker also has a guide on how to Set Up and Use XP Mode in Windows 7.

Engadget has a very long and complete post on How-To Install Windows 7 and live to tell about it including:

From XP 32 to Windows 7 64 on a desktop

From XP 32 to Windows 7 32 on a netbook

From Vista 64 to Windows 7 64 on a laptop

Easy Transfer app

Hardware gotchas

The Easy Transfer Application goes like this:

Since we didn’t have much luck on the upgrade front and wound up re-formatting most of our machines prior to installation (which honestly is a good idea anyway), we tried out a variety of other ways to back up important data and app settings, including selectively restoring pieces of automated backups from a Windows Home Server box and the ‘ol “Copy everything I think I need to a thumb drive and hope I didn’t forget anything” technique. But, far and away the easiest was Microsoft’s Easy Transfer application.

It’s not a new tool, having been around since Vista, but we found it to be the most comprehensive way to move either from one machine to the next (if you’re replacing an older PC with a new one), or to restore user accounts and permissions after a reformat. The tool is in the \support\migwiz directory on the Windows 7 DVD, and it has a simple wizard interface that lets you select which accounts to back-up and, for each account, what content to preserve. We chose to just back-up account and application settings, and then dumped the resulting archive to a thumb drive — we even remembered to not use the one we formatted for the netbook install — but you can push settings straight over the network to your new machine if you like.

Each account required about 70MB, excluding any actual user-generated documents, but it included everything from usernames and passwords to the custom toolbars you spent hours getting pixel-perfect in Office. It only took about five minutes to bundle all that stuff into a backup file, and even less time to restore it all after the install was complete. This app won’t archive your applications themselves, so you’ll still need to dust off that leaning tower of installation discs sitting in the corner of your desk, but once installed (and re-activated, where applicable) it’ll be like you and they were never parted — many apps will even remember your most recently accessed files, just like you left ‘em. Naturally, this works best with Microsoft apps and internal Windows settings, but it did surprise us by grabbing our Firefox bookmarks and history. Still, we’d recommend backing up important app settings manually to be totally sure it’s all there.

Liliputing has a post about the Microsoft to launch tool for installing Windows 7 from a USB flash drive:

Want to install Windows 7 on your Windows XP netbook, but don’t feel like buying the Windows 7 installation disc and a USB DVD drive to do it? Microsoft is now offering netbook users a way to download the operating system directly to a PC and use a USB Flash drive to install it.

Here’s how it works. First, you visit the Windows 7 for Netbooks page and purchase and download the version of Windows 7 you’re interested in. You can choose Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, or Windows 7 Ultimate. Windows 7 Starter isn’t an option.

Once you’ve downloaded disc image, you can use the new Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (WUDT) to copy the installation files to a 4GB or larger USB flash drive and then use that USB stick to install the operating system.

TechCrunch has a post about a time-saving way to install multiple applications at once:

Installing multiple software applications can be quite a painstaking, time-consuming chore, but a Y Combinator-funded startup has just pushed a tool that aims to make the process very, very easy. And free of charge on top of that.

Meet Ninite, a multi-app installer tool that’s as useful as it is simple.

Ninite has aggregated a bunch of popular PC applications in a range of categories on its website, and allows you to check multiple software programs and run the setup process for each of them in one go. No installation of additional software required, and Ninite will even automatically refrain from including toolbars and whatnot with the software you’ve opted to install. The only disadvantage I can see is actually a feature: default settings for software programs you’ve chosen to install will automatically be selected, so there’s little customization you can perform during the set-up process.

Once you’ve selected all the apps you want, you’ll get a single executable file which will run all installations in one go while you go have an espresso.

DownloadSquad has an article about How to make a DVD of that student-only Windows 7 you bought for $29.99:

To start with, make sure your downloaded Windows 7 files (the ‘expandedSetup’ directory) is unzipped into C:\ — it’ll make things easier later.
1. Download this tool — alternatively you can obtain the official pack from Microsoft, but that’s a whole darn gigabyte.

2. Unzip and move oscdimg.exe to your System32 directory (likely to be C:\Windows\System32)

3. Open an elevated command prompt. In Vista you do this by typing ‘cmd’ into your ‘Start Menu’ and hitting ctrl+shift+enter. In XP, just type ‘cmd’ into the Run dialogue (Windows Key+R or from your Start Menu).

4. Type (or copy and paste) the following into your command prompt (this will vary a little, depending on where you’ve put your expandedSetup folder):

oscdimg.exe –u2 –b”C:\expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com” –h “C:\expandedSetup” C:\WIN7.ISO

5. Ta’da! You’ve got a burnable ISO!

All you need to finish the job is a good burning application like ImgBurn, CDBurnerXP, or InfraRecorder. For this particular task I’d recommend ImgBurn – then just right click the ISO file and start the burn from your context menu. Or launch ImgBurn and choose “write image file to disc” — your choice!

No DVD burner? If you have a 4GB USB flash drive handy, check out this app!

Big thanks to Brian Wasylkoski, who was kind enough to let me harass him while he went through this process at the University of Manitoba. –Lee.

Hopefully soon I’ll have my complete listing of all Windows 7 compatible multi-touch hardware posted, most of which is expensive enough to be beneath my notice, but I do want to help: after years of searching and researching even I have trouble keeping them all straight.